Yankees Win 35th Al Title

Rare Vizquel Error Breaks Open Game

NEW YORK — When he was told by a reporter before Game 6 that his team was like a box of chocolates, Cleveland Indians manager Mike Hargrove smiled and said, "I can't argue with that."

Sometimes even Hargrove doesn't know what he's going to get.

Take Tuesday night. First Cleveland starter Charles Nagy was shelled by the Yankees, allowing six early runs. Then the Indians responded by scoring five runs in the fifth.

The strangest turn of events, however, came an inning later.

That's when shortstop Omar Vizquel made an error on a routine ground ball.

Vizquel's gaffe allowed leadoff man Scott Brosius to reach. Joe Girardi followed with a walk and Derek Jeter drove them home with a triple before scoring on Bernie Williams' single.

Until then, Tuesday night's game was Cleveland's for the taking.

But with three runs in the sixth, the Yankees had the insurance they needed for a 9-5 win that brought them their 35th American League pennant.

New York, which will seek its second World Series crown in three years, awaits the winner of the National League Championship Series, San Diego or Atlanta. The World Series opens Saturday night at Yankee Stadium.

Vizquel shouldn't be blamed for Cleveland's defeat. He batted a team-high .440 in the series and made a half-dozen superb plays.

But his blunder was stunning because it ended his streak of 46 errorless postseason games, covering 237 chances. This season Vizquel compiled the second-highest fielding percentage in baseball history at .993.

Although Vizquel's error was out of character, the Yankees' scoring in the first inning was not. The Indians had been outscored 15-3 in the postseason entering the game.

Jeter started the rally with a one-out infield single. Paul O'Neill singled to right and Williams followed with an RBI single. Chili Davis' sacrifice fly put the Bronx Bombers ahead 2-0. The Yanks added to their lead in the third on Scott Brosius' three-run homer. At that point, it seemed that the Yankees could taste their postgame champagne.

But then Yankees starter David Cone--27-5 in his career at Yankee Stadium--started to falter. He gave up three consecutive hits to start the fifth before walking David Justice. After Manny Ramirez struck out, Jim Thome deposited Cone's first pitch a dozen rows into the reight-field upper deck. Suddenly the score was 6-5, and the sold-out Yankee Stadium crowd of 57,142 was silenced.

Reliever Dave Burba shut down the Yankees in the fourth and fifth innings, but he became unglued after Vizquel's error in the sixth. Burba walked ninth-place hitter Joe Girardi, and with one out, he hung an inside curveball to Jeter, who fought it off for an opposite-field triple. Williams' RBI single gave the Yankees a four-run advantage.

Cone pitched just well enough to win, lasting five innings and giving up five earned runs. Nagy, who got chased after three, took the loss.

In determining his lineup, Yankees manager Joe Torre showed he wasn't afraid to roll the dice. He started 24-year-old Ricky Ledee in left, even though Ledee had just one postseason at-bat before Tuesday and hit just .241 in 79 regular-season at-bats.

"Why not?" Torre asked. "He's on our roster. . . and I have tried everybody else in left field."

As it turns out, Ledee was the only Yankees starter not to get a hit. The team that had entered the game batting .198 in the series picked a perfect time to break out of its offensive funk.

"We don't want to play (Wednesday)," Torre insisted. "We will do everything we can to win tonight."